The Inscribe Anniversary Weekender took place at Debden House Centre, Loughton, from Friday 26th to Sunday 28th of July 2024.
As I travelled down from Leeds that first morning, I was heavy with anxiety. For the past few years, I’d struggled to create space to write consistently with intent. The longer I spent not thinking about writing, the less I considered myself one. By Spring of that year, I’d returned my craft to its place of priority in my personal journey, and re-embedded creative space into my week. However, by the time the Weekender came around, a loud part of me was still of the opinion that I could not progress past the level I felt I had been stuck at, and struggling with for years.
The Weekender was organised by Inscribe (also an imprint of Peepal Tree Press) who are based in Leeds - my hometown of 24 years - though its members are from all over England. This Weekender was also a celebration of 20 years of Inscribe. Dorothea and Kadija reached out to contracted Inscribers past and present and associate writers, to gather as many of us as available in Debden House. Still, I knew a handful of us 20-or-so writers, providing a great deal of familiarity and ease.
The anxiety and heavy self-critique made me place great hope into the weekend of activities to reignite my relationship with writing. Stepping onto the platform at the last stop of my train journeys that Friday, I was aware that this Weekender would be a greater intervention than anything else I’d tried so far.
Bernardine Evaristo would be delivering a talk and Anthony Joseph would be leading us in a workshop as cornerstones of our activities, which also included 1-1 mentoring, discussions on resources and inspiration, and rotating group feedback and sharing sessions. The combination offered a variety of voices and reflections, opportunities for writing and editing, and dedicated sessions for learning and development.
Bernadine’s guest lecture on the first night on being a writer, as a career, purpose, and calling, enthralled me. Her words reached me like a key to a lock, shifting my view on my development so far, and almost instantly lifting me out of my sea of limiting beliefs. The next morning, I entered the day as if all the fear of expression that I had seemed to struggle with had never been there. I didn’t feel like a better writer, but I remembered I was a writer. In the recent past, writing workshops had left me grasping a pen for dear life but not drawing ink. The hours-long workshop with Anthony, that I had worried might conclude the same way, was nothing short of a shock to my nervous system, that seemed to open new cognitive pathways in my brain. It was a struggle to not laugh out loud in my chair as my wrist glided over paper and words flowed from the mind in a way that I’ve not felt before, even prior to my extended writer's block.
The Weekender was immersive, engaging, encouraging, and active, filled with creativity sessions, writing space, and critical, constructive, feedback altogether stirring my sea of critical expression that had been still too long. Returning to a space of communion with writers from all over England, with nothing shared but our statuses as non-white, felt like a jump start to my creative practice.
Taiwo Ogunyika
